Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. News

Sony’s fiscal year report confirms no PS5 launch before March 2020

By
Sony PS5 PS4 release launch fiscal year report analysis sales
Image used with permission by copyright holder

After a wave of theories, predictions, and leaks, the official rollout for Sony’s next home console has begun. System architect Mark Cerny started things off with a tease of the console’s hardware in a Wired interview, and now, via the company’s report on the 2018 fiscal year, we know that the PlayStation 5 won’t launch before spring 2020.

Analysis of the forecasts in Sony’s consolidated financial results led us to conclude that the PS5 won’t be launching before the close of the 2019 fiscal year and The Wall Street Journal’s Takashi Mochizuki confirmed as much with Sony. We know that the company will be dishing out lots of money for advertising when the PS5 launch is set in stone and a specific element Mochizuki points toward is the lack of an increase in marketing cost for the 2019 fiscal year, which is the time between April 2019 and March 2020. 

Recommended Videos

Looking at how the PS4 performed, Sony definitely shouldn’t rush to put a PS5 out and splinter the massive install base that is currently in place. Whatever good graces the company established in this current generation will have to mostly reset to zero when the next Xbox and PlayStation hit the market. If Digital Trends’ assessment is correct, that rollover will be held up by a pretty high price as well.

Sony PS5 PS4 release launch fiscal year report analysis sales
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Based on the report, gaming and network services were heavy hitters for Sony and bright in the most operating income collectively. That’s over the company’s well-established music and home entertainment divisions. The PS4 specifically dropped when looking at 2017 numbers to 2018, but only slightly. Game software sales increased year-on-year, and the number of subscribers to PlayStation Plus also grew.

Related

Sony predicts a continued decline in PS4 hardware sales in the forecast but anticipates continued software sale growth. The operating income the gaming division attracts is also expected to take a significant hit due to increases in development expenses for PS5 and decrease in contributions from first-party software. That second point is likely because, as we previously reported, those studios are hard at work on PS5 games. Combined with the lack of investment in PS5 marketing during the 2019 fiscal year, the pooling of operating incoming into the console means we’ll likely get a reveal in 2020 with a launch soon after.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Charles Singletary Jr.
Charles Singletary Jr.
I'm a Birmingham, AL raised author, journalist, and gaming enthusiast currently residing in San Antonio, TX. My work has…
3 realistic improvements we want to see with PS5 Pro games
A red and blue PS5 stands on a table with matching controllers.

As we reach the middle of this current console generation, people are wondering when improved “Pro” versions of consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X will arrive. PS5 fans had their curiosity rewarded this week when Moore’s Law is Dead and Insider Gaming leaked the specs of what has become colloquially known as the PS5 Pro and is reportedly referred to as “Trinity” internally at Sony.

The leaked documents indicate that the PS5 Pro will have a similar CPU to the base model that can be modified to run at a slightly higher clock speed, as well as 67 teraflops of 16 bit floating-point calculations, a GPU with 60 AMD compute units and faster memory bandwidth, and more. These are improvements over the launch PS5 model, but it isn’t a console generation-like leap in terms of hardware power.

Read more
This PS5 Pro leak reveals a massive jump in performance
The Playstation 5 system standing upright.

Sony is indeed working on a more advanced version of the PlayStation 5 that could feature a more powerful GPU that's potentially up to three times faster for specific tasks compared to current PS5 models.

YouTuber Moore's Law is Dead claims to have obtained a technical overview document for the PS5 Pro, code-named Trinity, and Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson has confirmed the leaked specifications' accuracy, which suggests a holiday 2024 release window for the console.

Read more
New PS5 update makes the DualSense’s mic and speaker even better
A DualSense and DualSense Edge sit on a table together.

Sony rolled out another beefy PlayStation 5 update today with the main goals of improving the speakers and mic on the DualSense and DualSense Edge controllers and deepening the number of Share Screen viewer interactions.

According to a PlayStation Blog post from when this update first entered beta testing in February, the speaker on the DualSense controller will now be able to output sounds more clearly at a higher volume. If you've been playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, this update is useful because it will make Chadley sound better when they are speaking through your DualSense. Sony also says it's using machine learning to improve noise cancellation on the DualSense's built-in microphone.

Read more